motherboard New motherboard straight up will not work with either my graphics card or integrated graphics

[GhostieBoy]

Sorry, this is kind of a long story. But there's a lot of details.

 

But I just bought an Asus Z590 ROG Maximus Hero XIII (13) to run my i9-10850k on and an ROG Strix GTX 1070ti. I was upgrading from an MSI z490 MPG Gaming Plus. I just wanted to treat myself to a nice board since the one I already had was pretty bare bones. It was working flawlessly the night BEFORE the mobo swap.

 

Anyways, I bought the Hero about 3 days ago at my local Micro Center and had an opportunity to install it last night. I got all my hardware switched over and went to boot it up. I had it plugged into the DP port on the GPU and in turn that was plugged into my monitor. I hit the power switch on the Hero (as it had one and it was easier at the moment) and it went through the POST cycle. Then it hit me with a "D6" error code, which I looked up and it says it's a "Graphics Card Abnormality." Yea. Real descriptive. It basically just told me to make sure it was plugged in, try a different slot, etc. So I moved it down to the lower slot with little luck. Pretty much had the same exact problem. Trying to remove variables I put and HDMI cable into the Hero (as it only has HDMI) and took the 1070ti out to force it to run on integrated graphics. I was able to boot into the BIOS that way. Then I realized it wasn't recognizing EITHER of the m.2 NVME SSD's in the system anywhere in the BIOS. I had one in the top slot and one in the bottom and neither was showing up. I decide to go to bed and sleep off the frustration.

 

I woke up today ready to try some new things. I took my dad's RX570 out of his system and put it into mine and it worked. Inversely I put my 1070ti into his system and it also worked. So something was not working properly with the interface between the Hero mobo and the 1070ti. I called up Asus tech support and the deepest they went was removing the CMOS battery before basically saying "yea we have no idea what to do. Level 2 support will call you in 24-48 hours" which is quite inconvenient for me. Hopped back in the car, drove an hour to Micro Center, and got it exchanged for a new one thinking I just got really unlucky and got a bad board. I even took the 1070ti with us and asked the guy at the service counter if he could fashion a quick test bench just to ensure it worked with the new Hero board and 1070ti. He said sure and while he set it up, we had some nice conversation.

 

About 5 minutes of messing around and he got it up and running and it even booted up their windows m.2 SSD. The only big difference between his and mine is he used a 10400 and a different RAM stick. I left feeling confident it would work because I just saw it work with almost my exact same setup.

 

I got home and started to put everything together. I tried to replicate it all exactly as he did. Put the m.2 in the same slot, the power cords in the same spot, etc. Tried to replicate everything exactly as he had it. Went to press the power button and..... same thing. But almost worse. I couldn't even boot into the BIOS with integrated graphics not to mention with a graphics card. Q code D6 every time.

 

In a fit of 'screw this" I pulled everything out and set up a crude test bench with the old mobo (the MSI MPG). One stick of RAM, my AIO hanging off the side, wires all over the place, PSU sitting on the table, I didn't even clean and re-paste the cold plate and CPU, I used the same stuff I just applied not 15 minutes ago. Plugged the DP port into the MPG with no graphics card installed. Due to the MPG board not having a power switch, I had to jump the connector with a screw driver. Once I did that, it booted right up and the bios appeared. Shut it down (with the screwdriver again) and installed the 1070ti. Plugged the DP cable into the GPU, shorted the power switch, and once again, booted right up. Shut it down again, installed the m.2 boot drive, and boom. Booted right to windows and I was able to sign in.

 

Still waiting on Level 2 tech to call me. Most likely will call tomorrow morning while I am still asleep with my luck. 

 

Kind of want to throw in the towel with this board, but I want to give it a fair chance. Maybe I'm missing something important. Does the community have any thoughts? Anything similar happen to you? 

 

Also no, I haven't tried flashing the BIOS. A) I don't fully know how and B) I don't even know if that's necessary. But I've been wrong before.

 

Edit: my friend says the 'mobo is being a mofo' and I just had to share that cause it made me laugh

 

Further Edit: System was built in my kitchen on tile floor and on a wooden table. So quite unlikely to have any ESD problems

 

[Bombastinator]

So what was different with his system?  The cpu. and where he did the install.   Whenever a system comes apart, the connections have to be double checked.  Also there’s a potential ESD problem because your install location is unknown.  Socks on a wool carpet with no anti static strap maybe?

[GhostieBoy]

3 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

So what was different with his system?  The cpu. and where he did the install.   Whenever a system comes apart, the connections have to be double checked.  Also there’s a potential ESD problem because your install location is unknown.  Socks on a wool carpet with no anti static strap maybe?

The only 3 things that were really different from his rig and mine was the CPU, the RAM, and the m.2 he booted off of. I dismantled it all multiple times and started again and nothing worked, so I probably checked connections like 30 times. And rebuilt it in my kitche on tile floor and a wooden table. I'll edit it with it with that info 

[Bombastinator]

5 minutes ago, GhostieBoy said:

The only 3 things that were really different from his rig and mine was the CPU, the RAM, and the m.2 he booted off of. I dismantled it all multiple times and started again and nothing worked, so I probably checked connections like 30 times. And rebuilt it in my kitche on tile floor and a wooden table. I'll edit it with it with that info 

Also the monitor cable. It even in-line with the graphics system. The ram would produce different problems if it was an issue.  M.2 I don’t know. 

[An0maly_76]

I had something of a similar nature a couple years ago, but with an MSI B450M Bazooka in my current rig.

 

Long story short, the B450M Bazooka didn't seem to like the replacement GTX1650S I bought. Refused to boot, constantly spiking a VGA POST error. Reinstall the original GT1030 and it would boot. Install the drivers for the GTX1650S, power down, reinstall the GTX1650S, continued to VGA POST error until the board literally shut down and would not power on. MSI had me send it back for RMA. Don't know what they did, but it worked when I got it back.

I have since learned that this could partially be due to pre-built PC's having a "members only" component list, but I rather think that MSI at least, engineers its budget components not to play nice with non-MSI components (the 1650S was an Asus). Maybe some other manufacturers do that also. People can call me crazy if they want, I'm not going to argue with anyone about this. I know what I saw, and nothing else explains why it booted fine with the original card and gave a VGA error with the same card that later worked fine. Though I will note that I still played hell getting Windows to recognize and use it. Maybe it could be an Asus thing (hope not, the board I just bought for my new build is an Asus), but I doubt it.

[GhostieBoy]

26 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Also the monitor cable. It even in-line with the graphics system. The ram would produce different problems if it was an issue.  M.2 I don’t know. 

True, the monitor cable was different, but why would it display an error if it wasnt outputting to the monitor? Would it even know? I tried 2 different cables at home and it worked fine. I'm not saying you're wrong or anything. That just seems really odd to me that the motherboard or CPU would recognize that as a problem and thus display the error code D6. I didn't consider RAM. But how could that effect display? Wouldn't it have just given me a RAM error code? (I know you probably don't know the answer to that. Just thinking out loud

[GhostieBoy]

25 minutes ago, An0maly_76 said:

I had something of a similar nature a couple years ago, but with an MSI B450M Bazooka in my current rig.

 

Long story short, the B450M Bazooka didn't seem to like the replacement GTX1650S I bought. Refused to boot, constantly spiking a VGA POST error. Reinstall the original GT1030 and it would boot. Install the drivers for the GTX1650S, power down, reinstall the GTX1650S, continued to VGA POST error until the board literally shut down and would not power on. MSI had me send it back for RMA. Don't know what they did, but it worked when I got it back.

I have since learned that this could partially be due to pre-built PC's having a "members only" component list, but I rather think that MSI at least, engineers its budget components not to play nice with non-MSI components (the 1650S was an Asus). Maybe some other manufacturers do that also. People can call me crazy if they want, I'm not going to argue with anyone about this. I know what I saw, and nothing else explains why it booted fine with the original card and gave a VGA error with the same card that later worked fine. Though I will note that I still played hell getting Windows to recognize and use it. Maybe it could be an Asus thing (hope not, the board I just bought for my new build is an Asus), but I doubt it.

Hmmmmm.... that would be interesting. I'm not gonna fully rule that out, but I build this system myself. So I don't find it likely, but not impossible at all

[Bombastinator]

25 minutes ago, GhostieBoy said:

True, the monitor cable was different, but why would it display an error if it wasnt outputting to the monitor? Would it even know? I tried 2 different cables at home and it worked fine. I'm not saying you're wrong or anything. That just seems really odd to me that the motherboard or CPU would recognize that as a problem and thus display the error code D6. I didn't consider RAM. But how could that effect display? Wouldn't it have just given me a RAM error code? (I know you probably don't know the answer to that. Just thinking out loud

I don’t think ram is the problem here.

[GhostieBoy]

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

I don’t think ram is the problem here.

Likewise, but apparently something is off because I rebuilt my old system and my RAM that's rated for 3200mhz wont go past 2800 without the overclock failing.

 

Basically my entire computer is broken